


A Matter of Bait and Bite

by Hyperius (Euregatto)



Series: A Matter of Bait and Bite [1]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: AU - the Senator & the Jedi, Dreamsharing, F/M, First Kiss, Force Bond (Star Wars), I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied/Referenced Torture, One Shot, Rey Kenobi, Senator Ben Solo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 16:26:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13252083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euregatto/pseuds/Hyperius
Summary: Rey Kenobi, a newly appointed Jedi Knight, has become a personal bodyguard to Senator Ben Solo, an ex-Jedi who now oversees mediation between the Republic government and the successful New Jedi Order.It's unfortunate that Rey has been having strange dreams about killing him.





	A Matter of Bait and Bite

**Author's Note:**

> [Based on this wonderful masterpiece.](https://01091006.tumblr.com/post/149117041409/01091006-authe-senator-and-the-jedi-i)  
>  A short Reylo thing. I saw the art on my dash and had to write _something._

  

  

Brackets of sunlight jostle the shaded spot beneath the ancient tree where Senator Ben Organa-Solo had hunkered down to meticulously pore over an outdated book. Wind rushes through the leaves and the grasslands of the valley like a specter. Rey Kenobi’s hardened gaze watches the Senator sleep, his head rested against the bend where the thick roots merge with the tree’s trunk, and when the breeze passes, she remembers to breathe.

In another life, she wouldn’t have taken this serenity for granted.

In her dreams lately, the Force shows her one of these other lives: her lightsaber is a single-sided, icy blue blade that cuts easily through Ben’s flesh – (in her dreams, he calls himself _Kylo Ren_ and there is a suddenness about him that often twists her stomach, like she’s missed a step) – and blood flashes sickeningly red against the snow.

It’s laughable. Ben Solo’s prestigious Jedi Knight bodyguard, and Master Skywalker’s second strongest student to ever graduate from the academy, out for the Senator’s head like he was some trophy to be won. But why was the Force showing her these visions? Surely she, once a Padawan under Ben’s rigorous guidance, would never harm her most trusted friend?

The Senator inhales as if he was having his own dream, lolling his head to the other side. Rey holds her breath in apprehension.

She studies his face, the sharp curves of his jawline, the tepid relaxation in his features. And she prefers him like this. Listless. Unwound. Perhaps he’s dreaming about another world in another life, maybe he sees himself in her visions – the frost uprooted beneath his fingers when he falls at her feet, the acute sting of an arduous wound in his shoulder. Perhaps the fight, unlike the agonizing repetition she experiences, ends with a truce, and not with his face carved open like a sigil.

Rey thinks they fell together, him and her, at some point along the way. There’s something unnaturally terrifying about that. To have destiny entwine the same people again and again and again, and to be powerless against fate as it flays them to the bone for the sake of exposition. A cycle, persistent and unbroken and immortal.

Spiritual mutilation is not enough of a sacrifice to please the cosmos, it seems. Rey wonders if the Force has any say in the matter.

Her fingers are clenched around the hilt of her lightsaber and she doesn’t remember when or how that happened. She hasn’t been this irrationally guarded in months, not since she was first anointed a Knight and then assigned to her ex-master’s side.

The dark had seduced Ben before. It was an incident that ruptured the fabric of the Jedi Council and rippled up through the network of the overseeing Republic. She remembers it all – the screaming, the iridescent purple glow in Ben Solo’s lightsaber, the way he grasped her throat when she stepped between him and Master Skywalker, the _despair_ in his eyes as she fought to breathe – and she hopes she’ll never have to see him that way again.

(Broken, without control.)

“He would never hurt me,” she would have once proudly claimed. She can safely say, now, at least, with tensions finally diminished, that Ben would, in fact, never _dare_ raise a finger in her direction unless rightfully provoked. His new life as a Senator and as a medium between the Jedi and the political stature of the galaxy seems to bring him a comfort that the confliction of the Force never did.

Rey can safely say she loves him, but to what extent, she’s unsure, and to another extent, his own intentions are often puzzling. In all fairness to her, he’s the emotional equivalent of a dying star. She’s noticed it though, the way his breath hitches when they touch, how he whispers her name in his sleep, so gently she almost misses it.

The problem is apparent.

Everything that they are is professionally fronted, and their bond is something deeper, emotionally convicting and mentally latching. She could never shake it (not that she wants to). Master Skywalker might have his suspicions, but knowledge amongst the Jedi is a matter of bait and bite, so he has certainly never hinted at what he knows. Rey just assumes he, like Leia, are keen in their old age; tuned with the world without consequence.

That, and the visions are haunting her desire to get closer to Ben than they already are.

When he used to train her, she would sometimes brush his exposed skin and see tendrils of memories. She would relive his capture by the First Order while on a mission, hearing the muffled speech of a man with fire-red hair, and then feel the static of the electrocution chamber – and the pain of a snapping bone is just intense enough to realign her with reality. It leaves her breathless, voiceless.

Other times she would experience little memories. Leia Organa fixing his hair one morning, scolding him the next. Han Solo showing him piloting tips in the cramped cockpit of the Millennium Falcon, the same Falcon streaking across the sky and a glaze of tears are blurring his vision. She’s quickly come to learn how to control the leaks. Occasionally, she allows them leniency, coveting any miniscule amounts of affection she can.

 _(Have you seen mine?_ she wants to ask him and never does. She wants him to understand what makes her so persistently biting and jealous.)

Ben groans and she snaps out her thoughts to watch him, teetering on the brink of waking. “Rey,” he stresses, his eyes half-lidded when they finally open. “What’s made you so tense?”

Her clutch on her lightsaber has turned her knuckles white. She quickly releases it, allowing her arms to go slack. “It doesn’t hurt to be on guard. As you're well aware, it's my job.”

It’s not technically a lie.

He senses her confliction all the same and pulls himself upright, grunting under his breath about his sore back. “You don’t have feel compelled to stand all the time,” he tells her, patting the ground next to him. “In the eyes of the council you are little more than my personal escort, but to me, you are still my Padawan.”

She tries, and fails, to fight her smile. “That’s unprofessional, Senator.”

“Since when have I been anyone but Ben?” he asks, seemingly taken aback by her formality. She calls him Senator only in the professional face of their routine but never in private, when it’s just them and the tides of time finely pressed into the crevices of the world.

“In my dreams,” is her shortest answer. She gradually steps up to his side and settles on the grass, her hands lax on her knees.

“Do you see snow?”

She looks at him, at the pulse of his alabaster neck, at the curiosity in his dark gaze. He reminds her of standing on slick ice. “An icy forest,” she admits, feeling the world shaking below her feet, and then a ravenous ravine opens. When she blinks, the dream recedes. “There’s blood, a broken black mask, and it feels like I can’t breathe. Have you been experiencing the same dreams?”

“The Force must be showing us something.” He takes her hand in his and observes it. “Yet, you’re always untouched,” he says breathlessly, as if falling backwards.

“I kill you, sometimes.”

“As expected.”

Rey swallows the rock forming in her throat. Ben lets her go the same way one would release a bird into the sky, in favor of collecting his discarded book. A tome, really. History and fact, topics that will always pique his curiosity. _(Do you regret it?_ she hears him think, but she can’t hold on to the thought.)

She gently runs a thumb over the soft arch of his cheek, where she imagines a jagged scar carved into his flesh like a branch of lightning. In her dreams the mark is on the other side. Ben hesitates under her touch, and then leans into her hand. Rey wonders if he seeks comfort in her because she can’t let go of anything. Him, included.

He pauses at the rim of her lips. His hesitation is understandable. They’ve never been closer than this, than an _almost_. It’s not a matter of whether they want it but whether simple affection would smudge their professional images –

Rey doesn’t care and kisses him.

Whatever it is the Force is showing her, whatever it is he’s trying to run from, it’s already stopped haunting them.

   


End file.
